Political Correctness???

Wisla Krakow's Nikola Mijailovic was just handed a 5 game ban for allegedly directing racial slurs at Blackburn's Benni McCarthy. I have no doubts that racism occurs in the game. In fact it's one area that frustrates me with europe. They seem 30 years behind the US in addressing the issue both in the game and in society as a whole. My concern is over exactly how it's addressed in the game. In many ways the issue is similar to that over hate crime laws in the US. I've never been a fan of them myself. If you murder someone because they're hispanic instead od murdering them because they slept with your wife or over a drug deal gone bad, I don't see either as being worse than the other. They all show a clear disrespect for human life. The same situation applies to cleaning up things in the game. Is it any worse for a player to commit ungentlemanly conduct if they're trying to get under the other guys skin by telling him his sister's a whore than it is to tell him he's a monkey? And even if you decide that calling a black player a monkey is worse, where do you draw the lines? If you tell a Turkish player that his dad was a Kurdish terrorist is that a plain insult or is that racist? What if a Brasilian player with clear African heritage calls a player from the Ivory Coast a monkey? What if a referee at a game overhears a Somali player telling an African-American player that his mom was a crack whore? Is that a racial insult when it's one black insulting another? And if it is, will the punishment be just as bad as if it a white saying that to a black? Or what an English player tells a Russian player that his dad is a worthless drunk and should lay off the vodka? Is that going to be punished too? My concern is that as they try to clean up the game, 2 things will happen. The first is that the authorities will not anticipate these issues and try to start dialogue on them until they've occured. This will result in inconsistant punishments both in terms of what constitutes racial abuse and the punishments that are handed out My other concern is that it will take decades before the full scope of racism is addressed. That is for too long the definition will be oversimplistic and PC-driven. It will not take into account racist taunts directed at players because their Corsican or Russian or some other form of "white". And it won't take into account the various racial taunts from one "black" player to another "black". It is nice to see UEFA slowly dipping their toe into the water and starting to get involved. But they should've been doing a lot more about this a decade or two ago. And now that they're finally doing something about it, they don't seem to be considering all the aspects of the issue. I